DC Court Clears Way for EPA to Regulate Methane

June 27, 2012

Welcome to the USSA – the United Socialist States of America. Just think USSR updated, because that’s what we’ve now become.

The reason for this latest MDN tirade? Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. ruled in favor of the rogue, power-hungry so-called Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in a case that will allow unelected bureaucrats inside the EPA to regulate everything—all human activity—under the guise that said activity produces greenhouse gas emissions (a copy of the ruling is embedded below).

Did you know that every time you exhale you emit a greenhouse gas? It’s called carbon dioxide (CO2)—the stuff plants need so they can produce oxygen. That’s right. CO2, one atom of carbon, two atoms of oxygen, is now officially a greenhouse gas and a “pollutant” according to the brainiacs at the U.S. District Court.

Guess what the number two greenhouse gas is? It probably won’t surprise you that it’s methane—or natural gas. Natural gas is “natural” because it occurs—get ready—naturally! Methane, or CH4, is the stuff we talk about every day on this website. It’s also the stuff that comes out your rear-end. Oh no! Every time you breathe, and every time you (ahem)…flatulate, you’re emitting greenhouse gases that are now officially pollutants according to the court. Guess the EPA will need to regulate YOU, you polluter! Maybe there’s a future in manufacturing breathalyzers and buttalyzers so the EPA can keep track of you. Problem is, it requires manufacturing, and that will be a no-no according to the EPA.

The EPA says their “rules” (which are really laws that nobody passed and are enforced by an agency of unelected political hacks) are meant to protect the environment. Bull-pucky. Their rules are meant to empower the Obama administration to control private business and industry—to restrict manufacturing in this county and force its citizens to drive glorified golf carts as cars. They want their hands the levers of power and this gives it to them.

If you can claim naturally occurring substances like CO2 and CH4 are so-called greenhouse gases, you can force their reduction, or elimination, shutting down plants, taking cars off the road, doing just about anything you want to do because almost all human activity involves these two naturally occurring substances. This decision is a tragedy and a national disgrace.

Of course, for the court to hand down this decision means they’ve drunken deeply from the man-causes-global-warming theory. And make no mistake, it is only a theory and not proven science. MDN would argue it’s not science at all.

Here are some select bits from Reuters’ coverage of the decision:

A U.S. appeals court on Tuesday upheld the first-ever U.S. proposed rules governing heat-trapping greenhouse gases, clearing a path for sweeping regulations affecting vehicles, coal-burning power plants and other industrial facilities.

Handing a setback to industry and a victory to the Obama administration, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously ruled the Environmental Protection Agency’s finding that carbon dioxide is a public danger and the decision to set limits for emissions from cars and light trucks were "neither arbitrary nor capricious."

The ruling, which addresses four separate lawsuits, upholds the underpinnings of the Obama administration’s push to regulate carbon dioxide emissions, and is a rebuke to a major push by heavy industries including electric utilities, coal miners and states like Texas to block the EPA’s path.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said the court found the agency "followed both the science and the law in taking common-sense, reasonable actions to address the very real threat of climate change by limiting greenhouse gas pollution from the largest sources."

"EPA’s massive and complicated regulatory barrage will continue to punish job creators and further undermine our economy," countered Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, a Republican and long-time critic of the EPA’s climate change regulations.

Though states like Texas said the EPA’s rules were a "subjective conviction" because they did not set hard and fast thresholds for unsafe climate change, "EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atom every time it approaches a scientific question," the court wrote.

The ruling clears the way for the EPA to proceed with first-ever rules limiting carbon dioxide emissions from newly built power plants, and to move forward with new vehicle emission standards this summer.

"These rulings clear the way for EPA to keep moving forward under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon pollution from motor vehicles, new power plants, and other big industrial sources," said David Doniger, a senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

Industry groups said the EPA’s regulations will impose burdensome regulations that will spur job cuts.

"The EPA’s decision to move forward with these regulations is one of the most costly, complex and burdensome regulations facing manufacturers," said Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers. "These regulations will harm their ability to hire, invest and grow."

The EPA’s rules could affect 6 million stationary sources including 200,000 manufacturing facilities and 37,000 farms, Timmons said in a statement.*